Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right The Witherspoon Institute Task Force on International Religious Freedom • Timothy Samuel Shah, principal author Matthew J. Franck, editor-in-chief Thomas F. Farr, chairman of the Task Force Princeton, New Jersey Copyright © 2012 by the Witherspoon Institute, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in print, broadcast, or online media. Cover design by Barbara E. Williams Book design and layout by Margaret Trejo Printing by Thomson-Shore, Inc. Published in the United States by the Witherspoon Institute 16 Stockton Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 Library of Congress Control Number: 2012931788 ISBN 978-0-9814911-9-6 (softback) ISBN 978-0-9851087-0-0 (ebook) Printed in the United States of America Contents executive summary v introduction 1 Part One: The Ground of Religious Freedom chapter one What Is Religion? The Anthropological Basis of Religious Freedom 11 chapter two A Political Case for Religious Freedom 19 chapter three A Moral Case for Religious Freedom 26 chapter four A Religious Case for Religious Freedom 32 A Jewish Case for Religious Freedom by David Novak 37 A Christian Case for Religious Freedom by Nicholas Wolterstorff 39 An Islamic Case for Religious Freedom by Abdullah Saeed 41 chapter five A Legal Case for Religious Freedom 44 Part Two: Religious Freedom and International Affairs chapter six The Strategic Case for Religious Freedom 53 chapter seven The Strategic Dimension: Policy Implications 70 iv Contents conclusion 76 The Witherspoon Institute’s Task Force on International Religious Freedom 81 notes 82 executive summary Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right Religious freedom is under sustained pressure today around the world. In some places, it is fair to say that religious freedom is under siege. This book is a response to that sobering fact. Although scant attention is paid by governments, the academy, or the media, the implications of this crisis—and we contend that it is a crisis—are quite serious. A worldwide erosion of religious freedom is causing large-scale human suffering, grave injustice, and significant threats to international peace and security. Outside the West, tens of millions of human beings are subject to violent per- secution because of their religious beliefs, or those of their tormentors. Scores of millions more are subject to serious restrictions on their religious freedom. In the West itself, including the United States, religious freedom is also under various pressures. Where intellectual and political leaders treat religious freedom with skepticism or indifference, it is not surprising to find encroaching threats to the conscience rights and the public witness of religious persons, communities, and institutions—and a failure to perceive the high importance of religious freedom in our relations with the rest of the world. For the last three years, the Witherspoon Institute’s Task Force on International Religious Freedom has examined the various dimensions of the challenge faced by religious freedom, and has deliberated on the most effective policy responses that can be undertaken by the United States government, and by other governments around the world. In May 2011, the Witherspoon Institute convened an unprec- edented interdisciplinary meeting in Princeton, New Jersey, of more than thirty experts on the subject, from the fields of psychology, sociology, law, philosophy, theology, political science, and international relations. They included academics, policy analysts, and journalists, as well as advocates and adherents from a variety of religious traditions. The result was a focused discussion over two days of the basis of religious freedom, its present condition, and the prospects for its future. This monograph is the Task Force’s considered statement on these matters. Drafted by Timothy Samuel Shah, with contributions from Task Force chairman vi Executive Summary Thomas F. Farr, the Witherspoon Institute’s Matthew J. Franck, and the members of the Task Force, it is informed by insights from all these academic disciplines and religious traditions. In the pages that follow, the reader will encounter the following arguments: • Religion is the effort of individuals and communities to understand, to express, and to seek harmony with a transcendent reality of such importance that they feel compelled to organize their lives around their understanding of it, to be guided by it in their moral conduct, and to communicate their devotion to others. • The evidence of recent anthropological and psychological research suggests that the capacity for religious belief is natural; that belief appears early and easily in the lives of individuals; that it appeared full-blown at the dawn of human civilization; and that the suppression of religious belief, expression, and practice therefore runs against the grain of human nature and experience. • Religious freedom “in full,” as we call it below, has a variety of interlock- ing dimensions: intellectual and spiritual; personal, moral, and practical; expressive and social; and legal and political. While no religious persons or communities have a legitimate claim to absolute freedom from respon- sibility to the polities in which they find themselves, all human beings have a right not to be coerced into abandoning their own religious convictions or adopting those of others. • Freedom of religious faith and practice is a vital part of a “bundle” of freedoms and other social, economic, and political goods that together undergird and enable free, just, and stable societies. The protection of religious liberty is sig- nificantly and positively correlated with freedom of speech and press, civil liberties more generally, the equality of women, and economic freedom. • Religious freedom contributes to stable political order, to social peace and the reduction of violence, and to the endurance of democratic institutions. While the introduction of protections for religious freedom, where they had not previously existed, can be “destabilizing” in the short run, there are reliable payoffs for freedom and order in the long run. By contrast, the repression of religious freedom is virtually certain to produce political instability, to stunt the growth of healthy civil society, and to cripple democratic development. • Religious freedom is not merely the legacy of a particular culture or cultures, Western or otherwise. It is, rather, a universal principle of justice regarding the human experience as such. Religious freedom is essential to human dignity and integrity, a reflection of every human being’s duty to form his conscience rightly, in accordance with his best judgment about ultimate truths. For each of us, it is essential to our ability to live justly—to do justice to the truth, to ourselves, to other human beings, and to our communities. • The freedom of religion has both private and public dimensions. It is the freedom to pray, to worship, to commune with one’s fellows of like mind Executive Summary vii and heart in the private practices of faith. But it is also the freedom to bear witness to one’s beliefs and commitments, to be visibly religious in public life, to associate freely on the basis of religion and peacefully to encounter others with differing views on a basis of equality. It is the freedom to organize and act politically, to vote, to make arguments about public policy, and to leg- islate, on the basis of one’s religious beliefs, consistent with principles of uni- versal justice toward others. • Religious freedom is not merely the counsel of secular reason. Some who hold this view argue as though the right to believe in and to act on religious principles only finds support from a vantage point independent of religion, or even thoroughly skeptical of it. To the contrary, we contend that religion can and does supply its own ground for the freedom of religion. It is a principle close to the heart of many religious traditions that belief and practice are not authentic if they are not freely undertaken by free persons. • In particular, we argue that the three great Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—contain the internal resources to make the case for the religious freedom of all human beings to attach themselves to any faith or none at all. Preeminent scholars in all three traditions contribute brief statements, in the pages below, making a Jewish case, a Christian case, and a Muslim case for religious freedom. • The centrality of religious belief and practice in the common experience of human beings throughout history, and the justice of the case for religious freedom, account for the prominent place given to religious freedom in legal traditions, statutes, constitutions, and international covenants in modern times. It is the hallmark of free constitutional democracy in particular to make religious freedom the “first freedom” in importance. Hence its singular place in the American constitutional tradition. Hence also its importance as a vital principle in international law, as witnessed in the Universal Decla- ration of Human Rights (1948) and various covenants. It is the patrimony of the leading democracies in the world, and the aspiration of peoples in developing nations. • Nonetheless the establishment of a place for religious freedom in legal codes, constitutions, and treaties is a mere “parchment barrier” to oppression. Civil society itself, as well as governments and international organizations, must take an active interest in the defense and advancement of this universal human right. No nations, no peoples, can take religious freedom for granted as permanently secure on the basis of stated legal principles alone. • America, the West, and the world at large have a vested interest in the advancement of religious freedom as a universal norm in all nations.